The prevalence of autoimmune hepatitis in Hashimoto's thyroiditis in a Turkish population.

PURPOSE: Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) is an autoimmune thyroid disorder. Although its etiopathogenesis is obscure, there are many findings about the relationship between other autoimmune diseases and HT. The reason for this association is a topic of interest, but in our study we searched for the concurrence of autoimmune hepatitis (AH) with HT, which is a relatively new autoimmune disorder for this association.

METHODS

Forty-six patients (44 female, 2 male) with HT were included in the study. Liver function tests, viral hepatitis markers, autoantibody panels, ultrasonography and liver biopsy were performed in certain cases.

RESULTS

All patients were hepatitis B negative, only two patients were hepatitis C positive (4.3%). Smooth muscle antibody (SMA) was 21.7% positive, ANA was 26% positive, Anti-Liver kidney microsomal antibody-1 (LKM-1) was 13.4% positive. Anti-mitochondrial antibody (AMA) was not detected. Liver biopsy performed on six patients. Two of them had (+++) positive LKM-1 antibody titer, the other two had ANA and SMA positive results respectively and the last two had chronic hepatitis C infection. The pathology revealed AH in first four patients. We found four out of forty-six patients with HT as AH (8.69%).

CONCLUSION

HT patients should be searched for autoimmune diseases and AH might be one of them.